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DISASTER & SOCIAL CRISIS RESEARCH NETWORK - NEWSLETTER 6

Natural Disasters and "Meteorological War"? (The Yugoslav Complex Disaster Diary) by Vera Vratusa(-Zunjic)

As meteorologists and other experts announce that the high temperatures followed by avalanches, rain and floods might continue in the summer of 2001 to cause catastrophic degradation of the life conditions of people and the organic life in Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries, the question as to what extent these natural disasters are caused by human activity remains open.

The experience of the mass air bombardment by NATO forces in Spring and early Summer of 1999, encouraged the so-called ordinary citizens without sufficient relevant scientific background, to notice that an interesting question would be to research the contribution made by the exhaust gases and war activities of the army planes to the deterioration of the main factors of climatic changes and natural catastrophes -the long-term global warming of the troposphere, the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and the "green house" effect. From a few hundred planes at the beginning, to more than a thousand toward the end, altogether NATO made around 36,000 flights during 78 days and nights of devastating bombardment, primarily of civilian targets in Serbia and Montenegro, and dropped 23,000 tons of explosives contained in forbidden cassette bombs and radioactive and toxic nuclear waste "enriched" projectiles (Vratusa (-Zunjic), Vera, 2000) Periodically intensified over-flight activity of NATO planes in the region still continues, contributing to further pollution of life environment and to forming of rain clouds containing nitric acid that do not stop at state borders.

The beginning of the new millennium was marked by the publishing of the first expert answers to the question whether there existed any connection between the war activities of NATO aviation and the natural disasters that followed.

Michel Chossudovsky gave one conditionally positive answer to this question. According to him, the latest scientific evidence indicates that USA military researchers have developed a technology that is capable of potentially triggering targeted floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes, by diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere; however, he adds that there is no evidence that this potential weapon of mass destruction has already been used (Chossudovsky, Michel, 2001).

Chosudovsky reminds us that already in the seventies the counselor for the national security at the time, Zbigniew Brzezinski, predicted in his book Between Two Ages, that the new technology would make the techniques for conducting secret warfare, among which he mentions techniques of weather modification and instigation of prolonged periods of drought or storm, available to the leaders of major nations. On the basis of the report published in the Intelligence Newsletter (1999), Chossudovsky points to the clarification made by Marc Filterman, a former French military officer: that one type of "unconventional weapons" for "weather war" triggers atmospheric disturbances through the use of Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radars.

Citing a London Times report (23 November 2000), Chossudovsky informs further that the US Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate is improving the new generation of technologies for weather manipulation within the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) located at Gokoma, Alaska. HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere", and presents in fact a part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly known as "Star Wars". Chossudovsky quotes Nicholas Begich, who depicts HAARP as "a super-powerful radio wave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere (upper layer of the atmosphere) by focusing a beam on them and then heating them. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything - living and dead".

New electronic "non-lethal" technology for weather manipulation presents a potential means of aggression and conquest capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems and disrupting the entire national economy of a state that is "unfriendly" or "rogue" from the USA and other NATO member states' point of view. These electronic weather manipulation weapons could contribute not only to a dramatic change of world climate, but could, according to Begich, also influence the human brain, even tectonic movements. Chossudovsky cites Dr Rosalie Bertell who warns that HAARP as "a gigantic heater" can create "long incisions in the protective layer of the atmosphere that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet" and thus have catastrophic environmental effects. Especially alarming are the possibilities of a combination of HAARP with the space laboratory and rockets within the integrated weapons' system for the delivery of great amounts of energy comparable to nuclear bombs at any point on earth by the way of laser and particle beams. Meanwhile the public could be told that a space shield against incoming weapons is being constructed, or a device for repairing the ozone layer.

An unconditionally positive answer, to the question as to whether or not the new weapon for the weather modification was already used, was offered by professor Dimitrije Stevanovic of the Electronic Faculty in Nis in the interview given to "People's Paper" (Stefanovic, Dimitrije, 2001). According to him, "meteorological war" began eight years ago in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when NATO forces first used the "meteorological bombs" containing chemicals able to disperse thick clouds over Tuzla, to make the bombing possible. The same activity was implemented in the skies over Vrnjacka Banja and Nis in 1999. He warns that this kind of warfare "is an even more morbid addition than uranium bombing, since uranium can be gathered and stored, while chemicals that were thrown into the atmosphere can be removed from it only through rain". According to prof. Stefanovic, the catastrophic effects of the "meteorological war" manifested themselves immediately after the bombardment and during the last year, when the temperature, like never before, oscillated around 40 degrees Celsius. Stefanovic further underlines that such chemical weather manipulation can cause damages that last for more than 100 years, depending on the chemicals used (e.g. silver bromide, liquid hidrocarbures). The appearance of "horizontal lightning, that never existed in our country" presents, according to Prof. Stefanovic, reliable indicator for the prediction that "great droughts can still be expected".

Competent authors will probably soon publish more data on "meteorological war" that will offer answers to possible additional questions of the sceptical readers: (1) was the new electro-magnetic and chemical technology for the weather modification really applied already during the NATO aggression in the Balkans? (2) does NATO still use it in this and other regions? (3) why do not the US and other NATO member states' army forces use this technology, or do not use it more successfully, for prevention of the more elementary types of disasters at home?

Even the most sceptical readers, however, just on the basis of the available published data, should take seriously the dangers posed to the elementary conditions of planetary survival by the refusal of the US military-industrial complex leadership to reduce the emission of gasses causing the ozone- layer depletion, by their intensified use of the fuel exhaust by NATO planes, and by the exploitation " of the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes" as suggested in the report of Air University of the US Air Force, in order to dominate global communications and space. Like in the fairy tale of the magician's lazy and insufficiently knowledgeable apprentice, such "tailoring of natural weather patterns" to fit the particular interests of transnational financial capital, could get out of control, causing climatic and tectonic disturbances of catastrophic proportions that would endanger in the last resort the apprentices of meteorological warfare technology themselves.

References:

Chossudovsky, Michel, 2001: "Weather Warfare", http://www.towardfreedom.com/mar01/weather.htm

Stefanovic, Dimitrije, 2001: "NATO je vodio i 'meteorolo{ki' rat protiv SRJ (NATO led 'meteorological' war against FR Yugoslavia as well", http://www.antic.org/SNN/)

Vratusa(-Zunjic), Vera, 2000: "Power Shortages and DU Debris", D&SCRN Newsletter, No. 4, December, http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/d&scrn

Vera Vratusa(-Zunjic)
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, Department of Sociology
Cika Ljubina 18-20, 11OOO Beograd, Yugoslavia
fax: + 38111 - 639-356
phone: + 38111 - 3282-141
e-mail: vvratusa@dekart.f.bg.ac.yu


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